Our Favorite End-of-Summer Recipes for Labor Day
This list of 37 Labor Day cookout recipes covers everything from poolside bites and apps to our very best burgers. Whether you need grilling inspiration or indoor-friendly adaptations for steaks, skewers and ribs, we’ve got you covered. We also have some seriously delicious desserts that take advantage of late-summer produce.
Starters
Upside Down Tomato Tart
How to get a tomato tart with a crispy crust and richly-concentrated, caramelized tomatoey flavor? Bake upside-down! To avoid sog from this watery fruit, we first salt the tomato slices, then roast them separately to allow the liquid to cook off—setting the stage for a sturdy, browned and savory, Parmesan-enriched crust. You can make the quick, food processor-friendly dough up to two days in advance; the rest comes together with just tomatoes and thyme.
Indonesian-Style Corn Cakes or Fritters
Milk Street’s Head Recipe Developer learned how to make these corn fritters, or corn cakes, in Indonesia. These ultra-airy and light fritters are studded with pops of fresh corn and chilies. We use a food processor to bring the batter together and pair them with a dipping sauce that isn’t technically Indonesian, but provides a tangy, creamy contrast.
Salt and Vinegar Smashed Potatoes
These smashed potatoes are inspired by the classic salt and vinegar chip. The potatoes are crispy and salty on the outside with a creamy texture inside. Bright and tangy vinegar packs a punch in four different additions— including the mayo-based dipping sauce.
Charred Guacamole
Char your guacamole! Charring vegetables to deepen flavor is a pretty common practice, but Chris Kimball hadn’t seen it applied to guacamole until a recent trip to Mexico City, where you might also find it studded with peanuts or seafood. The result isn’t just smoky—it’s also more flavorful and complex. It’s a technique we love for salsa and tomato sauce, and in most cases when working with so-so produce.
Summer Tomato Tian
Ripe summer tomatoes are ideal for this all-tomato take on tian, a vegetable casserole from Provence, France. While a tian usually features an assortment of summer produce, we indulge in the rich, deep, concentrated flavor of roasted plum tomatoes. We season it all with salt, herbs and olive oil and cook until the tomatoes are bubbly and packed with concentrated flavors. Enjoy on warm crusty bread with cheese.
Our Best Burgers
Garlic-Rosemary Burgers with Taleggio Sauce
Next time you make cheeseburgers, try this simple yet elegant recipe from Chef Ignacio Mattos. These seasonings, combined with a simple, creamy taleggio cheese sauce, enrich these burgers with deep umami and aromatic notes. And they’re ready in 35 minutes.
Cuban-Spiced Burgers
We found the solution to bland ground beef when biting into a frita (aka Cuban hamburger) at Miami’s El Mago de las Fritas. It had strong, chorizo-like flavor from a generous dose of a tomato paste sauce blended with garlic, hot sauce, Spanish smoked paprika, and cumin. Back at home, we found that smoked paprika and cumin alone were enough to transform supermarket ground beef, along with an easy freezer trick that helps work in the flavors.
Smoky Chili-Garlic Pork Burgers
To give these pork burgers spicy-sweet flavor and mild garlickiness, we mix in Asian chili-garlic sauce and a little brown sugar. We also smear the buns with a chili-garlic mayonnaise. Pillow-soft, subtly sweet buns are a particularly good match for the tender, juicy burgers—we especially like potato buns or rolls.
Indian-Spiced Pork Burgers
For deeply flavorful 35-minute pork burgers, we look to southern India. To give them the flavor of a Goan-style spiced pork sausage, we use a spice mix of garam masala, paprika and cumin, marrying the flavor profile of Goa with the American burger. They're especially delicious topped with yogurt, torn fresh mint leaves and thin slices of cucumber or tomato.
Salmon Kimchi Burgers
These salmon burgers are packed with Korean flavors. Gochujang and kimchi bring heat, umami and acid to the fish, while the food processor does most of the work. Optionally, you can coat the outside of these patties with panko to give the burgers a crispy exterior.
Parmesan and Herb Turkey Burgers
It’s time to stop treating the turkey burger as a dry, unexciting substitute for beef—instead, think of it as an herbaceous burger with subtle meaty flavor. We use a breadcrumb panade for maximum juiciness and balance the umami depth of Parmesan with herbs packed within and slathered on top in a minty sauce. You can have it on the plate in 35 minutes.
Quinoa and Black Bean Burgers
These bean and quinoa burgers play up the pan-fried crispiness you won’t get in a meat patty, seasoned with bean-friendly spices you’ll find in chili. You need not hide these bean and quinoa burgers under a pile of fixings; they’re good enough to eat on a simple salad.
On the Grill
Lemon-Lime Lacquered Grilled Chicken (Inihaw Na Manok)
Make 7 Up chicken yours! This unexpectedly harmonious blend of sticky-sweet flavors originates from Filipino inihaw na manok: a tangy, lemon-lime lacquered chicken beloved as a street food staple. And the soda is paramount to the dish’s success. We tried substituting fresh citrus juice in place of the lemon lime soda, but found that the high-fructose corn syrup in the 7 Up (Sprite works too!) gives the chicken a richer, more flavorful caramelized coating.
Taiwanese Grilled Corn
This smoky-spicy-sweet corn, slathered in a deeply flavorful coating, was the highlight of Chris Kimball’s trip to a carnival-like market in Taipei. Among the culinary delights from cane juice presses and grilled squid and ice-shaving machines, he discovered long rows of rotisserie corn, “slathered with various coatings, some richly colored and thick, reminding me of corn dogs or candied apples; the corn’s exterior became the main attraction.” We replicated the smoky, toasty flavor on the grill and recreated the basting sauce with a handful of more easily-obtainable, big-flavor ingredients.
Grilled Corn with Miso Butter and Sesame Salt
Miso and butter are the perfect pair, so miso, butter, and perfectly grilled corn? Immediate yes. We melt the two together and add sake, lime juice, and sesame oil. The cobs first are steamed in an aluminum roasting pan placed on the grill, a technique we learned from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. This helps the kernels stay juicy and plump. The steamed corn then is charred directly on the grates. An easily prepared sesame-salt topping adds texture and nuttiness to the finished corn.
Grill-Roasted Sweet and Sour Peppers with Feta and Herbs
These sweet and sour peppers are inspired by a Persian syrup called sekanjabin. The peppers are smokey and charred with a bright, vinegar-honey dressing. Mint adds some freshness back in while chopped almonds provide textural contrast and nuttiness. Everything is rounded out with some crumbed feta for a salty, briny note.
Grilled Chicken Salmoriglio
Salmoriglio is a sauce from Southern Italy consisting of lots of lemon, herbs, garlic and, of course, olive oil. We use zest and juice in ours to optimize the lemon flavor, and grill the lemons to mellow some of the acid and give the finished chicken a deep, fruity sweetness.
Grilled Mustard-Herb Potato Salad
These potatoes are a mustard lover’s dream. They’re smokey from the grill, bold and tangy from two types of mustard and white vinegar, and boast perfectly creamy interior texture. Most grilled potatoes get charred to death in the time it takes to cook the interior perfectly. We solve this problem by parboiling small potatoes whole and then charring them to finish. The interior is perfectly cooked and fluffy while the outside gets smokey and charred. We use a grill basket to keep the potatoes contained while still getting lots of char from direct contact with hot metal.
Grill Without a Grill
Chris Kimball’s Reverse-Seared Steak with Chimichurri
For years, Chris Kimball assumed that you could’t make a medium-rare steak without burning the surface—but then he found a better way. A method that gets a perfectly-browned exterior and juicy, medium-rare interior? Called the “reverse sear,” it uses a two-step cooking process to ensure you get a perfectly pink interior, edge-to-edge. Finish with fiery red chimichurri.
Traybake Tacos al Pastor
Tacos al pastor is a perfect union of pork and pineapple: meat that’s crispy-on-the-outside, succulent on the inside, with bursts of sweet pineapple merging with the fatty drippings. In Mexico, that result comes from a huge shawarma-style rotisserie, with a tower of thin-sliced pork and pineapple, rotating so that the meat evenly crisps while the inside remains tender as it’s sliced off.
We don’t have that technology here. What we do have is a sheet pan and a little ingenuity. We found that we could make a simple adobo sauce in a blender and get crisped-yet-succulent meat from well-marbled pork, which melds with the pineapple slices as all of it roasts in the oven. It’s essential to chop all of this in a pile together, at the end, to evenly distribute fatty, crunch bits with the tangy fruit.
Lacquered Pork Ribs with Hoisin, Honey and Five-Spice
Cantonese BBQ inspired these mouthwateringly salty-sweet pork ribs. Based on char siu, often made with long, thin strips of pork shoulder, we lacquered our ribs with a similar mix of high-impact flavorings: hoisin, honey, soy sauce, fresh ginger and five-spice powder. Brushing ribs with a glazing mixture, at 30-minute intervals during cooking, builds layers of caramelization.
Gochujang-Glazed Baby Back Ribs
Here’s our riff on dwaeji kalbi, delectable, sweet-and-spicy Korean BBQ ribs. We adapted Sohui Kim’s recipe from “Korean Home Cooking,” using an oven for ease, but preserved the meat’s mouthwatering tenderness.
Butterflied “Grilled” Shrimp (Camarones Zarandeados)
No grill? No problem. These butterflied shrimp use a scorching hot skillet to get amazing char indoors. Butterflying increases the surface area in contact with the pan so you get even more flavorful browning. Shell-on shrimp helps the shrimp steam within their shells without overcooking; the end result is a much sweeter tasting shrimp. These are perfectly succulent and savory, ideal for outdoor eating with your bare hands.
Broiled Shrimp with Garlic, Lemon and Herbs
The broiler is an easy way to get fast charring indoors, especially for something that cooks quickly, like shrimp. These skewers cook in about 6 minutes total and are brightly flavored with lemon, garlic, scallions, and parsley.
Seared Za’atar Swordfish with Cucumber Salad
Swordfish is underrated. It’s sturdy enough to be grilled (though this recipe is made without one) and sears beautifully in a pan. The swordfish “steaks” are seasoned with za’atar, a Middle Eastern herb and spice blend that contains herbs for earthiness, sumac for tang, and sesame seeds for nuttiness.
Cookout Classics
Japanese Potato Salad
Japanese potato salad gets creaminess from the potatoes, not just the mayo. Mayo not only weighs down potato salads, but it also acts as a barrier, keeping flavor out of the potatoes.
For this Japanese-inspired potato salad we partially mash the potatoes and add vinegar while still hot, which allows them to soak up the liquid. This is our go-to technique for boosting flavor and brightness in potato and bean salad—the difference is between flavor and none.
To approximate the flavor of slightly tangy Kewpie mayo typically used in Japan, we supplement our reduced portion of American-style mayo with a cooked egg yolk, vinegar, and sugar. For a savory touch, we add diced ham and finished with scallions.
Japanese Macaroni Salad
Meet Japan’s creamy, fresh-flavored macaroni salad. The key is Kewpie mayo that’s lush and rich, yet tangy-sweet from a cut of vinegar. We love that this lends itself to balanced, bright flavors, so we added vinegar to American-style mayo—allowing crisp vegetables shine through and perfectly balance umami-packed smoked ham.
Pasta Salad with Charred Corn and Cilantro
This pasta salad takes the best of two sides, pasta salad and grilled corn, and combines them into one dish. It’s inspired by esquites, or Mexican street corn, which typically is grilled and then served off the cob mixed with crema or mayonnaise, lime juice, cilantro, cotija cheese and a variety of toppings. No grill is necessary for our version, which uses a searing hot skillet to char the kernels.
Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Sweet Lime-Garlic Dressing (Goi Gà)
This rainbow-colored Vietnamese chicken salad (goi gà) is one of the greatest recipes of all time, in the opinion of one Milk Street social director. It is so fresh and so bright, you feel better after eating it.
Shredded chicken is nestled in a crisp, spicy-sweet heap of crisp thin-sliced cabbage, carrots, basil, and cilantro, topped with crunchy peanuts. The classic, sweet chili-lime Vietnamese dressing is perfect. Umami-rich fish sauce is balanced with sugar and woken up with chili heat and citrus. “Bursting with flavor,” one reader writes—a vibrant dinner salad which “feels healthy and totally satisfying.”
Thai-Inspired Smashed Cucumber Salad
This cucumber salad uses one of our favorite techniques: smashing! Smashing the cucumbers does two things, it helps remove some of the liquid from them (we also remove the seeds and salt them to aid with this) and it creates a textured surface area that the dressing can cling to. For this salad we took inspiration from Thai flavors, using vinegar, sugar, and a little fish sauce for that ultra umami kick. The flavors are incredibly balanced. It’s sweet, tangy, savory, salty and a little spicy from a thinly sliced jalapeño.
Desserts
Blender Berries and Cream Cake
This berries and cream cake is Milk Street’s answer to “flag cake.” While it isn’t decorated to replicate a flag, its colors and flavors are reminiscent of those berry-topped sheet cakes that pop up around American holidays. Our version is made with our classic vanilla blender cake, the dead-simple upgrade to boxed cake mix, and a mascarpone whipped cream filling. The layers of cake and cream are adorned with macerated blue and red berries, proving that you don’t need to sacrifice flavor for festivity.
Fresh Peach and Raspberry Crostata
We look forward to summer peaches all year just for the crostata. This rustic free-form tart opts for a minimalist filling to showcase the fresh sweetness of peaches and ripe berries; a buttery, shatteringly crispy crust is simply folded over around the sides, rather than covering the fruit. Remarkably simple, just sweet enough, with delicate floral flavors and aromas. A dollop of whipped cream or scoop of ice cream on the still-warm tart is the classic, exceptional pairing.
Lemon-Orange Tart
We love the fresh, bright flavor of lemon tarts, but the classic tarte au citron is acidic enough to strip the enamel off your teeth. We get gentler flavors by tempering the lemon with orange and softening heavy cream. And we utilize the perfume-y oils in the zest by rubbing it into the sugar.
As a plus, we skip the stovetop lemon curd, and simply combine sugar, zest, juice and eggs in a bowl.
Cherry and Chocolate Crumble Semifreddo
Semifreddo is the original “throw it together and freeze it” dessert. It translates from Italian to “half frozen,” which speaks to the texture of a dessert that is chilled in the freezer until set, but still creamy, not icy. The entire thing is frozen in a loaf pan and served by the slice. The frozen mousse-like texture is contrasted with crunchy chocolate cookies, with cherries and amaretto to round things out. We use store-bought cookies for this, making it an easy, make-ahead option.
Frozen Lemon Mousse
After a Milk Street Radio listener called in with a frozen soufflé conundrum, we were inspired to revisit an old classic from Lindsey Shere’s “Chez Panisse Desserts.” We’re calling it a frozen mousse for its brick shape and, well, because "soufflé" makes the recipe sound a lot more complicated than it is. Yes, it contains raw eggs, as similar desserts in French restaurants do. Pasteurized eggs in a carton, such as egg beaters, work fine, but you will need to whip them alone, without the lemon sugar; once the eggs achieve the proper airiness, sprinkle in the lemon sugar and whip for another 10 seconds or so. Vodka, however, is not optional. As our baking expert Rose Hattabaugh puts it, “sometimes you want a dessert for the adults in the room, and that’s what this is.”
Yelapa-Style Sweet Corn Pie
Corn pie (pay de elote) celebrates the sweet, grassy, delicate flavors of fresh corn that pair beautifully with sugar, eggs and dairy. This unusual custardy pie, developed by food writer Paola Briseño-González, comes from the beaches of Yelapa, Mexico, where roaming vendors sell slices to be eaten in hand.
S’mores Bars with Marshmallow Meringue
Ooey, gooey s’mores are the quintessential outdoors food, but they’re quite messy. This version takes that classic treat and turns it into a bar. Still ooey and gooey, but easier to make ahead and serve to a crowd.
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Willow Montana
Willow Montana is the Production Manager of Digital Media at Milk Street. Willow spends their days coordinating and planning video shoots, managing schedules and overseeing the execution of digital projects. They studied Baking and Pastry Arts at Johnson and Wales University and worked in restaurants while putting themself through six more years of college. They hold a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in English Literature and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Publishing and Writing. Willow is a firm believer in living a slow, quiet life and making things by hand. When they aren’t following the developers around with a camera at the Milk Street office, they may be found at home shaping loaves of sourdough, caring for dozens of houseplants and, occasionally, out in the wild at a punk rock show.
